Sri Lankan soldiers warns Sirisena of Ranil and OMP
Victimes of Kumarapuram shooting cry out for justice*Raviraj murder ! Eye witness testimony ignored !!
Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Monday, December 26, 2016
Field Marshal being MP unconstitutional – Sarath
December 25, 2016, 7:41 pm
One-time Chief of Staff of the Navy Rear Admiral (retd.) Sarath Weerasekera told President Maithripala Sirisena last week that war winning Army Commander Sarath Fonseka couldn’t hold the rank of Field Marshal and be a member of parliament simultaneously.
The President was told that National List MP Fonseka had been appointed Field Marshal in violation of the Constitution.
Former UPFA Digamadulla District MP pointed out to President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces that because a person holding the rank of Field Marshal was considered to be in active service for life, Fonseka couldn’t be a member of Parliament in accordance with the Constitution.
The Navy veteran raised the issue when a delegation from the National War Heroes’ Front met President Sirisena at the Presidential Secretariat last Wednesday.
Weerasekera asked President Sirisena whether he had been aware of Field Marshal Fonseka participating at the recent passing out parade of 124 Sri Lanka Military Academy (SLMA) Officer Cadets including women officers at Diyatalawa.
Weerasekera stressed that the government shouldn’t violate the Constitution to please any individual. (SF)
Tuesday, 27 December 2016Year 2017 marks two anniversaries
The year 2017 dawns with two anniversaries. One is the sixth anniversary of this series analysing economic and related issues. The other is the second anniversary of the good governance government that came to power in 2015 in a silent revolution. The first anniversary is to be celebrated by looking at some of the economic analyses done during the past six-year period. However, with respect to the second anniversary, a grand celebration is being planned by the victors of the silent revolution.
Grand plans to mark the anniversary of the silent revolution amidst an economic volcano
Any celebration by government leaders involves the spending of scarce public money for a purpose not directly productive according to economists. Yet, the leaders of developing countries are known for their desire to make a show-off of their successes by using taxpayers’ money. In Sri Lanka’s present case, it is more agonising for two reasons. One is that it is not only the taxpayers’ money that is being used; it is borrowed money which is being wasted since the Government has to borrow even to meet its day to day operations due to shortfalls in revenue. The other, is that it is being done while Sri Lanka is sitting on an economic volcano which is to erupt at any moment, destroying everything in the vicinity.
The economic crisis started in 2012
The economic volcano is the deep economic crisis which the country has been going through since around 2012. The symptoms of the onset of the crisis were visible from many fronts though they were conveniently ignored by the policy makers at that time. The symptoms took the form of a worsening external sector, unusual growth in money and credit, suppressed inflation, slow-down of economic growth and an undisciplined budget causing the accumulation of public debt. Independent analysts, including this writer, drew the attention of the policy makers at that time to the need for taking urgent corrective action to arrest the oncoming catastrophe. But the only response to such constructive criticism was a flat denial, rebuff, name-calling and personal attacks. On top of this, there was a deliberate attempt at massaging the main economic numbers painting a rosy picture about a fast-growing vibrant economy.
External sector crisis is looming over Sri Lanka
The external sector crisis began to manifest itself when exports started to fall both as a share of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP and the world exports from around 2005. It led to a growing trade deficit and a major part of the deficit was funded by using the remittances made by Sri Lankans working abroad. Those remittances provided a temporary relief to the authorities and they were supposed to use that breathing space to take measures to fix the external sector ailment permanently. But what was done was to borrow money from commercial sources and use the loan proceeds to meet the market demand for foreign exchange so that the rupee could be prevented from falling against other currencies. The attention of the policy makers to this insane strategy was drawn in an article published in this series in November 2011 under the title ‘External value of the rupee: Market driven or Central Bank driven?’ (Available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/58156/External-value-of-the-rupee--Market-driven-or-Central-Bank-driven-). Yet, the policymakers continued to follow the same policy by making ever increasing commercial borrowings from abroad. Then, the foreign borrowing numbers were cooked and published in a special debt report by the Central Bank to show a rosy picture. This stand of the Central Bank was challenged in another article in the series published in May 2014 under the title ‘Sri Lanka’s external debt sustainability: Complacency based on incomplete analysis may be the worst enemy’ (available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/297680/Sri-Lanka-s-external-debt-sustainability--Complacency-based-on-incomplete-analysis-may-be-the-worst-enemy). The Central Bank vehemently reacted, even going to the extent of personally attacking this writer but the problem did not go away and its results are now being faced by the present government.Massaging economic data to paint a rosy picture
Economic data too was manipulated by the government that was in power, starting from growth numbers and then poverty and unemployment numbers. Growth was shown as a super achievement but the actual growth was pretty much lower than what was publicised. Attempts were made by the Government to drive growth arbitrarily above what the economy could have achieved based on its capacity for growing, known as the country’s potential growth. The result was to overheat the economy, leading to both inflation and depreciation of the currency. This was brought to the notice of the Central Bank in an article published in this series in March 2014 (available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/268250/Potential-output-of-Sri-Lanka--It-is-dangerous-to-speed-the-car-beyond-installed-engine-capacity). The Central Bank once again rebuffed it as irrelevant but the subsequent events proved that the country was heading for disaster on both the inflation and exchange rate fronts. The inflated growth numbers were visible when they were significantly higher than the household income numbers gathered through field surveys even after making an allowance for the incomes of companies which are not included in household incomes but in the GDP numbers. This anomaly in growth numbers was again highlighted in an article published in February, 2014 (available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/258408/Average-income-of-a-Sri-Lankan--When-numbers-gathered-from-top-and-bottom-do-not-tally-). But the Central Bank instead of advising the Government on the adoption of relevant corrective policies, took issue with this writer. Then, it was revealed that the growth numbers had been massaged by the top economic policymakers to suit their petty objectives. This was the subject matter of an article published in the series in December, 2013 (available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/233962/Alleged-massaging-of-growth-numbers--Should-a-credibility-restoration-exercise-be-launched-for-Sri-Lanka-s-statistics-agency-). The poverty of the poverty numbers was also brought to the notice of the authorities in an article published in May, 2014 (available at: http://www.ft.lk/article/292226/Sri-Lanka-s-growth-paradox--When-poverty-yields--income-gap-holds-stubbornly).
Central Bank and Ministry of Finance acted as if there was no crisis
Thus, when the new government came to power in January 2015, it was a sick economy which it had inherited from the previous administration. The top priority of the new government was, therefore, to take a quick stock of the economy, make a diagnostic and a prescriptive study and introduce urgent corrective measures. Since the economic volcano was showing all the signs of eruption without warning, there was no time to be wasted. The Central Bank, as advisor to the Government, was to apprise the new government of the real economic situation and the need for urgent corrective measures but the Annual Report of the Monetary Board for 2014, prepared after the new government came into power and released in April 2015, was silent on any economic crisis being faced by the country. It had reconfirmed the doubtful economic data issued by the previous administration thereby removing any statistical ground for blaming it for the prevailing economic ills. Even the Annual Report of the Ministry of Finance, released in June 2015, had taken the same stand: The country does not suffer from any economic ailment that needs quick fixing. Consequently, it is the present government which is now being blamed for the ills in the economy.
IPS’s State of the Economy Report was more frank
Had the leaders of the new government gone through the State of the Economy 2014 report issued by the Institute of Policy Studies or IPS in October 2014, instead of relying on the Central Bank, their reaction to the issue would have been different. In this report, the first chapter on policy perspectives and the second chapter on macroeconomic performance outlined the basic economic issue faced by the country. The report said that the source of growth in recent years had been largely dominated by the domestic non-tradable sector, meaning that the growth had not generated sufficient volume of exports (p 2). In fact, if this message had been read correctly, any policymaker would have known the reasons for the chronic and acute external sector crisis in the country. The Government cash flow had been managed by delaying payments to suppliers which was not a viable solution. The viable solution was to raise revenue and curb wasteful expenditures. The report had stressed that the Government should have moved away from consumption type taxes which are unreliable and based on the performance of imports and economic growth. If both do falter, so does the tax revenue. For a more sustainable increase in tax revenues, it was necessary to go for fundamental reforms in tax policy and tax administration (p 3). This was not addressed to either in the interim budget or the two permanent budgets that followed.
Falling exports was the culprit, according to IPS
IPS had correctly identified that it was not prudent for Sri Lanka to go for mega projects undertaken out of foreign commercial borrowings backed by sovereign guarantees since they increased the Government’s payment liabilities, on one hand, and make the country vulnerable to adverse developments elsewhere, on the other (p 4). The report had advised that Sri Lanka should identify key urban areas into which industries and foreign direct investments can be channelled and build the energy, housing and environmental management infrastructure around it (p 13). This piece of advice aiming at inclusive growth everywhere is more prudent than embarking on a single province-based Megapolis, being undertaken by the Government. It has also opined that Sri Lanka, being a small developing economy, should consider the demand for its products from outside Sri Lanka as critical for sustained long-term high growth, absorbing the surplus labour and raising productivity (p 19). Hence, export of goods and services should be promoted at any cost and budgetary provisions should have been made for achieving that goal. The implication of the government-led economic growth in the post-2009 period, according to the report, is the driving of the private sector to lesser economic engagement with unintended consequences for long term economic growth (p 33).
The late realisation of truth by the new government
It took about 11 months for the Government to recognise these important requirements as revealed by the Economic Policy Statement presented by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to Parliament in November, 2015. It was too late by that time. Then, it is still too late now since two years have now elapsed without any concrete action by the Government to come out of the economic crisis in which it is now deeply immersed. The Government is walking into 2017 totally unprepared it seems, for the pitfalls that lie ahead.
Waste of two years without concrete action
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe presented a second economic policy statement in October, 2016 in Parliament. However, this second statement had no connection to the first statement he presented in Parliament nearly a year ago. It was a completely different statement from the first one, without any evaluation of the attainments made with respect to the goals of the first statement. Hence, two years have now elapsed without a concrete economic policy package for rescuing the country.
Ambitious plans to make Sri Lanka a rich country
In the second policy statement, the Prime Minister had emphasised the need for maintaining a minimum annual economic growth rate of 7% by Sri Lanka. The growth target of 7% is for the country to double its income in every 10-year period based on compound growth rates. Then, in a 30-year period by 2047, Sri Lanka’s income would increase by about eight times from what it had in 2016, elevating the country to the status of a rich country. It is a noble ambition but without a concrete plan, it appears that the target has become elusive.
Slowing-down of the economy in 2016 and 2017
Sri Lanka’s annual average growth rate during the post-independence period has been at about 4.7%, well below the desired growth rate of 7% announced by the Prime Minister. In 2016, the Minister of Finance has expected the economy to grow by about 6%. But the indications today are that the country’s growth rate in this year would be around 4%.
The country has already experienced a downfall of the output of paddy and tea, causing a negative impact on the growth targets for 2017. The best economic growth the country could attain in 2017 would be about 4.5%, despite the high economic growth expectations made by both the Central Bank and the Minister of Finance.
What it would mean is that the economy should grow faster than 7% in the next 30-year period, if it is to realise its target of becoming a rich country by 2047. This is difficult but not impossible, provided Sri Lanka follows a consistent economic policy toward that goal during the remaining 29-year period.
The country has already experienced a downfall of the output of paddy and tea, causing a negative impact on the growth targets for 2017. The best economic growth the country could attain in 2017 would be about 4.5%, despite the high economic growth expectations made by both the Central Bank and the Minister of Finance.
What it would mean is that the economy should grow faster than 7% in the next 30-year period, if it is to realise its target of becoming a rich country by 2047. This is difficult but not impossible, provided Sri Lanka follows a consistent economic policy toward that goal during the remaining 29-year period.
The fragile external sector
The external sector is fragile today with mounting pressure for the rupee to depreciate against the dollar in 2017. On one side, the country has lost a significant amount of its foreign exchange reserves in its attempt at defending the exchange rate. The free foreign exchange reserves by the end of the year would be around $ 4 billion, well below the amount it has to set aside for servicing the Government’s foreign debt during the next 12-month period.
The option available to the country is to borrow more foreign funds from commercial sources. However, the US Federal Reserve is planning to increase interest rates in order to avoid another economic and financial crisis in that country. With this expectation, US interest rates have started to go up causing capital outflows from EU and elsewhere. Thus, the Euro has already fallen close to parity with the US dollar. Sri Lanka, without sufficient foreign exchange reserves, cannot avoid a massive depreciation of the rupee in 2017.
This makes it important for Sri Lanka to finalise the deal on Hambantota Harbour and the Mattala Airport within the next three-month period.
The option available to the country is to borrow more foreign funds from commercial sources. However, the US Federal Reserve is planning to increase interest rates in order to avoid another economic and financial crisis in that country. With this expectation, US interest rates have started to go up causing capital outflows from EU and elsewhere. Thus, the Euro has already fallen close to parity with the US dollar. Sri Lanka, without sufficient foreign exchange reserves, cannot avoid a massive depreciation of the rupee in 2017.
This makes it important for Sri Lanka to finalise the deal on Hambantota Harbour and the Mattala Airport within the next three-month period.
‘Fiddling while Rome is burning’
The year 2017 and beyond is not rosy for Sri Lanka. With the mounting economic crisis which has engulfed the economy, Sri Lanka cannot waste money on anniversary celebrations. It would be like the Roman Emperor Nero, as the popular saying goes, fiddling while Rome was burning.
(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com)
Netanyahu summons US envoy in fallout over UN settlements vote
Jerusalem Planning Committee, meanwhile, expected to OK permits to build 618 apartments in Jewish neighborhoods across Green Line
Monday 26 December 2016
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro on Sunday, two days after Washington abstained in a vote on a UN resolution against Israeli settlements.
Their meeting came after Israel earlier called in 10 representatives of 14 other states that voted for the resolution.
An official Israeli source confirmed only that Netanyahu and Shapiro had met, without elaborating on the content or outcome of their discussions.
The UN Security Council passed the measure on Friday after the US abstained, enabling the adoption of the first resolution since 1979 to condemn Israel over its settlement policy.
The resolution demands "Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem."
It also says settlements have "no legal validity" and are "dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution".
Netanyahu, who had rejected the resolution as a "shameful blow against Israel," repeated the Israeli claim that US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were behind the resolution.
At the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said: "We have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated the drafts and demanded to pass it."
"This is of course in total contradiction to the traditional American policy of not trying to impose conditions of a final resolution," Netanyahu said, "and of course the explicit commitment of President Obama himself in 2011 to avoid such measures."
While the resolution contains no sanctions, Israeli officials are concerned it could widen the possibility of prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
They are also worried it could encourage some countries to impose sanctions against Israeli settlers and goods produced in the settlements.
Approval seen for 618 new apartments
The Jerusalem Local Planning and Construction Committee, meanwhile, is expected on Wednesday to approve permits to build 618 apartments in Jewish neighbourhoods across the Green Line, Haaretz reported.
The agenda was set before the UNSC resolution was passed on Friday condemning Israeli construction across the Green Line, including in East Jerusalem, as illegal, Haaretz said.
New housing permits continue an upward trend this year in construction plans approved for East Jerusalem compared with the last two years, Haaretz said. In 2016, plans for 1,506 housing units were approved, after 775 units in 2014 and only 395 units last year.
The agenda was set before the UNSC resolution was passed on Friday condemning Israeli construction across the Green Line, including in East Jerusalem, as illegal, Haaretz said.
New housing permits continue an upward trend this year in construction plans approved for East Jerusalem compared with the last two years, Haaretz said. In 2016, plans for 1,506 housing units were approved, after 775 units in 2014 and only 395 units last year.
Earlier on Sunday, army radio reported that Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered the Israeli security establishment to cease to all cooperation on civilian matters with the Palestinians, while retaining security coordination.
The measures taken on Sunday join Netanyahu's order to review engagements at the United Nations, including funding for UN agencies and the presence of UN representatives in Israel.
Right-wing Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Saturday night that Israel should "announce a full annexation of settlement blocs" in response to the resolution.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the far-right Jewish Home told army radio that his party would "soon propose a bill to annex Maale Adumim," a settlement city east of Jerusalem.
UN agency in Lebanon drops G4S
Campaigners in Lebanon score victory as UNICEF drops contract with G4S. They are vowing to continue to target G4S in Lebanon’s private and public sectors, until the security firm completely exits Israel. (via Facebook
The first UN agency in Lebanon has dropped G4S after a year-long campaign by activists for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement.
The Lebanese Campaign to Boycott the Supporters of Israel announced that the country’s UNICEF branch had ended its contract with the multinational security and incarceration firm as a result of a targeted campaign.
This included creative demonstrations and meetings at the offices of the UN children’s agency in Beirut.
On 2 December, UK-based G4S sold its Israeli subsidiary to Israeli private equity firm FIMI for about $111 million.
But the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) notes that G4S continues to be complicit in Israel’s violations of human rights and therefore remains a target for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
In conjunction with FIMI, G4S still runs the Israeli police training center Policity and provides services to infrastructure and real estate group Shikun & Binui in settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Since 2015, the global BDS movement has been urging United Nations agencies around the world to drop G4S.
Four UN agencies in Jordan have since ended their relationship with the world’s largest security firm.
“G4S may soon have to choose between investing in the vast Arab market or in Israel’s crimes and human rights violations,” Mourad Ayyash from the Palestinians Camps Boycott group, which mobilizes Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon, warned in a press release.
“This decision is a victory for the Palestinian prisoners who called upon people of conscience to boycott G4S,” said Afifa Karake, a member of the Lebanese Campaign to Boycott the Supporters of Israel.
Karake said the group will continue to target G4S in the private and public sectors in Lebanon, until the company completely exits Israel.
The BNC says that the firm has already lost contracts worth more than $22 million around the world as a result of the ongoing Stop G4S campaign.
Guman Mussa from the BNC said, “The inspiring growth of BDS in the Arab world will significantly amplify the impact of the global boycott and divestment campaigns against multinationals that support Israel’s regime of oppression.”
Friends and family mourn after a Russian military plane plunges into the Black Sea.
Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board.
By David Filipov
MOSCOW —The Russian investigation into the crash of a military transport plane that killed dozens of members of the Red Army Choir is focusing on pilot error or a technical fault, rather than terrorism, a top official said Monday.
Sunday’s crash was the second national tragedy for Russia in less than a week, once again in the shadow of the country’s military involvement in Syria. Once again, the nation was left with more questions than answers.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said on television the main theories for the crash “do not include the idea of a terrorist act.”
“We are working on the assumption that the reasons for the catastrophe could have been technical or pilot error,” he said. All 92 people on board are believed to have died.
The crash shook Russia six days after its ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was killed in public by a man who shouted about the war in Syria after the shooting.
A beloved and prominent charity worker was also killed in the crash when the plunged into the Black Sea minutes after it took off en route to a military base in Syria
Russia’s special Investigative Committee, which opened a criminal inquiry, said it was considering all possibilities.
A massive sea and air search operation has been launched with some 3,500 people and 32 ships, including over a 100 divers from across the country.
The government has helicopters ships and submarines searching the Black Sea for debris and bodies, the Defense Ministry said.
Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a military spokesman, told reporters in Moscow that no one survived after the aging Soviet-era jet, which had set out from Moscow, crashed shortly after taking off from the Sochi airport. The plane did not send a distress signal.
The pilot was “first-class,” Konashenkov said, and the 33-year-old Tu-154 jet had been serviced recently.
In nationally televised comments, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Monday a national day of mourning and said the cause of the crash would be carefully investigated.
Throughout the day, top-ranking legislators and Defense Ministry officials assured the public that a terrorist could never have made it onto the heavily guarded airfield outside Moscow where the jet first took off. Later, officials revealed that the plane had been scheduled to refuel at the military base in Mozdok, Russia, but had been rerouted to Sochi because of inclement weather. The Interfax news agency quoted a military source as saying the airport in Sochi, site of the 2014 Olympics, also has increased security.
The Defense Ministry published a list of passengers that included 64 members of the famed Alexandrov Ensemble, better known internationally as the Red Army Choir. They were heading to the Khmeimim air base in Syria to entertain Russian military personnel for the New Year’s holiday.
The choir, founded in 1928, has performed around the world. During the Cold War, it presented a human face for the Soviet Union with its repertoire of Russian folk songs. More recently, the ensemble, which the Defense Ministry said had 285 members, added popular Western music to its performances. Among those who were on the plane was the ensemble’s artistic director, Valery Khalilov.
Also aboard was Yelizaveta Glinka, known in Russia as “Doctor Liza,” who had won broad acclaim for her charity work, which included missions to the war zone in eastern Ukraine. Her foundation announced that she was accompanying a shipment of medicine for a hospital in Syria.
Russian state television showed clips of her accepting an honor from Putin for her work. When she and fellow workers depart for a war zone, she said at the ceremony this month, “we never know whether we’ll return, because war is hell on Earth.”
Throughout the day in Moscow, people placed flowers outside the headquarters of the choir.
The country also mourned nine journalists who were on the flight, and some stations canceled entertainment programs in favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the recovery effort and interviews with loved ones of the victims.
Their remains, authorities said, were to be taken to Moscow for identification.
U.S. Ambassador John Tefft joined other diplomats and international leaders in offering condolences.
The Tu-154, designed in the late 1960s, was the workhorse of the Soviet, and later Russian, fleet of intermediate-range passenger jets. Russian airlines have replaced the jets with modern aircraft, but government agencies have continued to use them.
Denis Manturov, Russia’s minister for industry and trade, said Sunday that it was too early to make a decision about whether to take the jets out of service.
“First we need to finish the investigation and understand the reasons” for the crash, he said.
Chinese aircraft carrier, warships pass Taiwan on ‘routine’ exercise
In this image taken from a video footage run by China's CCTV via AP Video, China's aircraft carrier Liaoning is seen during live-ammunition drill recently in the waters of the Bohai Sea in northern China. China's first aircraft carrier battle group has carried out its first live-fire exercise, the Defense Ministry has announced. Pic: AP
26th December 2016
A GROUP of Chinese warships lead by the country’s sole aircraft carrier has passed through waters south of Taiwan and is heading southwest, Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Monday of what China has termed a routine exercise.
The ministry said the aircraft carrier the Liaoning, accompanied by five other vessels, had passed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwan’s southernmost point on Monday morning via the Bashi Channel, between Taiwan and the Philippines.
“Staying vigilant and flexible has always been the normal method of maintaining airspace security,” said ministry spokesman Chen Chung-chi, declining to say whether Taiwanese fighter jets were scrambled or if submarines had been deployed.
Chen said the ministry was continuing to “monitor and grasp the situation”.
The exercise comes amid renewed tension over self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, following U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s telephone call with the island’s president that upset Beijing.
Senior Taiwan opposition Nationalist lawmaker Johnny Chiang said the Liaoning exercise wasChina‘s signal to the United States that it has broken through the “first island chain”, an area that includes Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan.
In Beijing, influential state-run tabloid the Global Times said the exercise showed how the carrier was improving its combat capabilities and that it should now sail even further afield.
China’s Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier Liaoning sails the water in East China Sea, in this handout photo taken December 25, 2016 by Japan Self-Defence Force and released by the Joint Staff Office of the Defense Ministry of Japan. Joint Staff Office of the Defense Ministry of Japan. Pic: Reuters
“The Chinese fleet will cruise to the Eastern Pacific sooner or later. When China‘s aircraft carrier fleet appears in offshore areas of the U.S. one day, it will trigger intense thinking about maritime rules,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
China has been angered recently by U.S. naval patrols near islands that China claims in the South China Sea. This month, a Chinese navy ship seized a U.S. underwater drone in the South China Sea. China later returned it.
Japan said late on Sunday it had spotted six Chinese naval vessels including the Liaoning travelling through the passage between Miyako and Okinawa and into the Pacific.
Japan’s top government spokesman said on Monday the voyage showed China‘s expanding military capability and Japan was closely monitoring it.
China‘s air force conducted long-range drills this month above the East and South China Seas that rattled Japan and Taiwan. China said those exercises were also routine.
China‘s Soviet-built Liaoning aircraft carrier has taken part in previous exercises, including some in the South China Sea, but China is years away from perfecting carrier operations similar to those the United States has practised for decades.
Last December, the defence ministry confirmed China was building a second aircraft carrier but its launch date is unclear. The aircraft carrier programme is a state secret.
Beijing could build multiple aircraft carriers over the next 15 years, the Pentagon said in a report last year. – Reuters
George Kennan Is Still the Russia Expert America Needs
The architect of Washington’s Cold War strategy offers President-elect Trump the best guide for managing Moscow.
BY DECEMBER 22, 2016
A quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow and Washington are in a confrontation with growing echoes of the Cold War, a conflict that was supposed to have been consigned to history’s dustbin. Even more troubling is that neither side has offered much of a framework for managing — let alone resolving — the new geopolitical standoff. The result has been an escalating conflict, with no clear end in sight.
Donald Trump is right to want to break with the policies of his predecessors that are in part responsible for the dismal state of relations today. But the president-elect’s assorted statements and tweets on Russia — his emphasis on the importance of better personal relations between himself and President Vladimir Putin, and his willingness to negotiate over everything from counterterrorism cooperation in Syria to sanctions imposed for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursions in Ukraine to the status of NATO — does not yet amount to a Russia strategy. While Trump is clear about his desire to improve relations, he has not defined where exactly he’d be willing to concede and where he’d push back against the Kremlin, nor has he laid out an overarching vision for U.S. relations, not only with Russia, but with Europe as a whole.
For inspiration, the incoming U.S. administration would be wise to look to the last successful example — the Cold War strategy that culminated in the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. And that means looking to its founder, George F. Kennan.
In the late 1940s, as U.S.-Soviet confrontation heated up, Kennan — who served as deputy to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, and later as ambassador himself — offered a comprehensive plan for managing that rivalry in two famous papers: a 1946 diplomatic cable known as the “Long Telegram” and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an essay pseudonymously published in Foreign Affairs in 1947, better known as the “X Article.” Kennan’s analysis, which included the injunction to “confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world,” became the basis for President Harry S. Truman’s containment doctrine.
Kennan’s containment strategy began from a careful and sophisticated analysis of the Russian leadership, whom he considered to be both pragmatic and opportunistic, and motivated by an expansionist ideology that could be checked by real-world constraints and costs. “If the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so,” wrote Kennan in 1946, so that “If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.”
In the hands of more hawkish Cold Warriors, Kennan’s containment concept became an excuse for policies he never endorsed: the costly nuclear arms race, the war in Vietnam, and the chess match in the Middle East and Latin America, all justified in the name of competing with the Soviet aggressor.
Kennan’s notion of containing Soviet expansionism via counterforce gave rise to a “domino theory” championed by Truman, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and subsequent administrations, under which third-world combatants became proxies for Moscow and Washington. Superpower involvement in intrastate and regional conflicts increased the likelihood of escalation to a direct U.S.-Soviet conflict, and even nuclear war. Kennan’s contemporary Paul Nitze, who also played a major role in shaping U.S.-Soviet policy, viewed the strategy as a battle of will and numbers, and argued for overwhelming the Soviets with superior military capabilities and deployments across the world.
But Kennan was horrified by such militarized interpretations of containment. For deterrence to work, Kennan argued, the West needed to convey a clear and compelling threat without a threatening or bullying tone, which he worried Russians might perceive as weakness, or which might push the Kremlin into a domestic political corner where it was forced to escalate. “Like almost any other government,” Kennan warned in his 1947 essay, “The Source of Soviet Conduct,” the Kremlin “can be placed by tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of realism.” He counseled that the Russians were “keen judges of human psychology … highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs,” and would be “quick to exploit such evidences of weakness.”Simply put, Kennan believed that Moscow could and should be deterred without resorting to high-risk arms races or proxy conflicts.
The relevance of Kennan’s strategy did not end with the Cold War. The major debate today over U.S. policy toward Russia centers on the Kremlin’s motives for its actions — whether it is acting primarily out of insecurity (fear of NATO encirclement, U.S. meddling in the post-Soviet neighborhood, perhaps even regime change in Russia itself) or whether it is simply exploiting Western weakness to restore its regional dominance and global influence. The great benefit of Kennan’s strategy is that it doesn’t require that debate to be settled — it encourages both engagement with the Kremlin, and the projection of strength needed to deter Russian aggression.
Above all, Trump should keep in mind Kennan’s emphasis on credibility and self-control. And to that end, Washington should take care not to overstretch its deterrent capabilities. For example, NATO can only deter Russian threats to the territorial integrity, political stability, or financial security of member states in the Baltic and Black Sea regions if it defines clear red lines and how it will respond when those lines are crossed. It is vital that the incoming presidential administration affirm its commitment to NATO’s Article 5, which mandates a collective response in case of an armed attack on any member state. Similarly, the United States itself can deter Russian cyberattacks, but only if it is clear and consistent in defining what constitutes such an attack, and if Moscow believes that the U.S. response will be certain and unacceptably severe.
By contrast, despite Western condemnation of Russian actions in Ukraine, partial isolation from international forums, and economic sanctions, Russia has not been deterred. This is because Moscow judges the benefits of blocking Kiev’s moves towards the European Union and NATO to be far greater than the limited costs, given the political and military constraints, that Ukraine and the West are capable of imposing in response.
While Kennan called for counterforce as a deterrent, he warned against applying Western power to try to change the Russian government itself. Such an approach would not only overreach in terms of the West’s actual capacity to influence events within Russia, but would certainly galvanize support among proud Russians for continued confrontation with the West. Instead, Kennan advised his own government to “formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of [the] sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past.” Many Europeans, he added, “are tired and frightened by experiences of [the] past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security.” Far from a dated reference to the aftermath of World War II, Kennan’s words capture a renewed sense of vulnerability to internal and external threats in Europe — and the United States — today, and underscore the continued necessity of U.S. leadership.
In that sense, the West’s response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Moscow’s apparent interference in European and American politics, and the Kremlin’s media activities around the globe, needs to go beyond determining how to defend NATO allies militarily. The new U.S. administration’s central challenge — and the challenge facing the West as a whole — is whether it can provide the positive vision that was integral to Kennan’s containment strategy, especially in addressing persistent problems like education, health care, infrastructure, and employment.If Washington demonstrates vision and resolve to address its own most pressing challenges, Americans can have far greater influence on developments in Russia than they ever could through direct confrontation. Containment, as Kennan himself thought of it, was as much about reaffirming and broadcasting the vision at the heart of Western power and prosperity, as it was about devising a direct response to Russian power.
Indeed, the Cold War ended to a great degree because Russians came to view the United States as a successful and prosperous society, whose model they hoped to emulate and whose partnership they desired to manage global challenges. By contrast, today’s deterioration in relations has been deepened by American failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lingering consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008, which shattered Russians’ faith in the American model for economic development.
Having embraced the frustration of ordinary citizens with American democracy’s broken institutions, can President-elect Trump now restore their confidence?
“Surely,” Kennan wrote, “there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin’s challenge to American society.”
Today’s U.S.-Russia confrontation may not exactly be a new Cold War, but Kennan’s insights are as relevant as they were 70 years ago. If the incoming Trump administration is to benefit from Kennan’s insights today, it will not only need to define the means by which it will defend U.S. interests and allies, but also put forward a vision for solving common challenges and building prosperity. The current conflict, like the Cold War, will end not when one side has pummeled the other into exhaustion or bowed to the other’s interests, but when both are convinced that a brighter future is within reach.
Photo credit: WARREN K. LEFFLER/U.S. News & World Report via Library of Congress
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